GSK and Save the Children

Save the Children and GSK have a strategic global partnership combining their expertise, resources and influence to help save the lives of one million of the world’s poorest children. Together we are finding new ways to help reduce the leading causes of child mortality.

Supporting Our Programs – Locally and Globally

Program Support

In the United States, GSK supports Save the Children’s immediate emergency relief efforts when a disaster strikes. Following the unprecedented 2017 hurricane season, we collaborated to help ensure children in Houston, Southern Florida and across the island of Puerto Rico were safe and protected, could return to learning and communities could build back stronger after the devastation.

In addition, GSK supports Save the Children’s preparedness efforts to build healthier and more resilient communities. With generous support from GSK, and in collaboration with Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Save the Children is developing a model for child-focused disaster planning for U.S. communities, to protect children – one of our most vulnerable populations – during natural or man-made disasters.

The Resilient Children/Resilient Communities initiative (RCRC) has developed two pilot programs in the United States – one in Washington County, Arkansas, and one in Putnam County, New York. The goal of the initiative is to guide participating communities through a crisis simulation to help them develop a sustainable, child-focused action plan. The project’s National Children's Resiliency Leadership Board helps connect learnings to key policies and programs that can improve preparedness systems for children nationwide.

Globally, GSK is working with Save the Children to mobilize the resources and expertise of our organizations for emergency response and humanitarian efforts. This includes funding to help Save the Children establish emergency health units – teams of health-worker specialists who are ready to deliver basic healthcare within 72 hours of a disaster. The emergency health unit teams have deployed during the European refugee crisis. GSK and its employees have also contributed to Save the Children’s responses to disasters in Nepal, and to the ongoing Middle East and European refugee crises.

GSK also supports Save the Children’s global programs to develop child-friendly medicines to reduce child mortality and newborn deaths, widen vaccination coverage and increase training of health workers in the poorest, hardest-to-reach communities. Our flagship country programs, initially launched in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya, include these interventions and are now being monitored and evaluated to allow the partnership to scale up and tackle child mortality in other developing countries supporting our programs – locally and globally.

New Product Development

Innovation is at the heart of the GSK and Save the Children partnership as demonstrated by the commitment to the research and development of medicines to help save the lives of mothers and babies in developing countries. Save the Children is involved in helping GSK research and develop medicines for children under age 5 and is helping to identify ways to ensure the widest possible access to medicines in the developing world. GSK’s expertise combined with Save the Children's child-health expertise and on-the-ground experience is providing children with basic health care, even in the most remote and marginalized communities.

Products include the antiseptic chlorhexidine – commonly used in mouthwash – which has been reformulated into a gel for cleansing the umbilical cord stumps of newborn babies to prevent serious infection, a major cause of newborn death in poor countries.

Employee Engagement

GSK’s commitment to Save the Children includes encouraging the 100,000-strong GSK workforce to get involved with the partnership through fundraising activities. GSK earned the 2017 Employee Engagement Social Responsibility Award for their first ever global Trek for the Save the Children Partnership in March 2016. Smashing their ambitious fundraising goal, over 40 GSK employees from 24 different countries trekked Mount Kenya for 6 days followed by a visit to Save the Children’s programs in Kenya.

As of April 2017, GSK employees around the globe raised over $4.34 million for Save the Children which is matched by GSK.

Save the Children also benefits from PULSE, GSK’s skills-based volunteering program, through which GSK gives their greatest resource – people – to contribute real and lasting value to their partners and the communities they serve. Over 100 GSK employees have worked with Save the Children since 2013 in locations such as Peru, the Philippines, Kenya, Columbia and the U.S.

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